Overtesting is costing too much and could be causing Florida’s performance to stagnate on the national level, according to a new report released this week from a state school board member and a prominent researcher on national education.

Using data pulled from the Florida Department of Education, Collier County School Board member Erika Donalds and researcher and InfiLaw Academic Affairs team member Adam Cota estimate that schools will spend around 10 percent of class time testing, and each Florida student will spend around a full school year testing before graduating high school

Lost testing time comes with a hefty price tag, too: the new report found districts and the state will spend roughly $2 billion in lost instructional time.

Donalds and Cota believe the biggest source of lost time was the loss of focus at the end of the year after high-stakes assessment tests have already been given. Because assessment scores are nearly 50 percent of teacher evaluations and hence are a primary focus in the classroom, the report says it’s predictable that teachers and students lose steam academically and may kick back and relax after the assessments are complete.

Nielsen reports that the Florida Department of Education is pushing back against Donalds-Cota for it’s read of data as it conflicts with the narrative they and its close allies at Jeb Bush’s foundations have been advancing.

But the department says the report neglects to characterize the “real gains” that have taken place in Florida’s education system. The DOE says districts should be responsible for these types of reports.

“It would be most appropriate for districts to conduct the studies recommended in the paper, and to have them collect data, rather than the anecdotal evidence cited in the report,” read a statement from the FDOE. “For example, the ‘loss of focus metric’ is the largest proportion of the statistics cited for ‘indirect loss of instructional time,’ yet there is no clear basis provided for this estimate.

The FDOE’s current and ongoing gross mischaracterization of FSA validity eliminates what little credibility they had left – particularly when it comes to massaging numbers. They’d surely dismiss data on “indirect loss classroom instructional time” as it “neglects to characterize real gains.”

Donalds-Cota’s findings are easy to read and void of the sort of statistical academic gas that FDOE and the Bush foundation educrats spew:

…despite the fact that the state is spending this much time on testing, the report found that Florida has still been trailing behind at the back of the pack in many respects, despite making hefty gains in education in the late 1990s.

Take, for instance, Florida’s high school graduation rates. The state had a 60 percent graduation rate several years ago, a number which has climbed to 75 percent. But Florida still ranks 40th in the nation among all states in high school graduation rates, and has for a number of years.

Florida students aren’t posting gains as high on national assessment tests, either. The percentage of Florida students scoring “advanced” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test only increased from 5 percent in 2003 to 6 percent in 2013, while the national average jumped from 5 percent to 7 percent.

NAEP scores have failed to remain consistent over the years as well. Fourth-grade reading scores improved from 32nd to eighth from 2003 and 2013, but the group of 4th-graders which took the NAEP test in 2009 (where they ranked 10th nationally) fell to 33rd as 8th-graders.

The findings are worrying for Donalds, who says although the state might be doing a better job at preparing students for a basic level of thinking, they aren’t quite as prepared for the rigors of college or more advanced subjects.

When students get to college, around 54 percent of Florida’s college freshmen taking placement exams require remedial education, opposed to about 40 percent of college freshmen nationwide.

Senate republicans blew a unique opportunity yesterday to ease the pressure on themselves that the current FSA disaster is creating. They should have embraced Hays’ amendment to SB 616 which ended 3rd grade retention and held stakeholders harmless until FSA results can be validated, but there were too many republican Jeb Bush absolutists seated in the Appropriations committee. Too many republicans march to the “we won’t retreat from accountability” meme.

Donalds-Cota is a new threat as it comes from one on their own. Donalds is part of a spin-off group of local school board members whom embrace vouchers and the republican-driven school choice agenda. Though now a maverick among colleagues, her memorandum finds common cause with Floridians save the “we won’t retreat from accountability” crowd.

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About Bob Sikes

A long time ago and a planet far, far away I was an athletic trainer for the New York Mets. I was blessed to be part of the now legendary 1986 World Series Championship. My late father told me that I'd one day be thankful I had that degree in teaching from Florida State University. He was right and I became twice blesses to become a teacher in the late 1990's. After dabbling with writing about the Mets and then politics, I settled on education.

Don Gaetz is repeating the Common Core and High Stakes Testing mantra that “we won’t retreat from accountability,” but that is EXACTLY what the state has done by using a proprietary test which has no comparison to other states, AND is not even validated.

The ACT test scores have steadily dwindled in Florida from 19th in 1994, to 47th in the USA in 2014. There has NEVER been any study showing education will improve if we use computerized testing. Quite the contrary. We are now measuring a student’s knowledge through the prism of keyboarding skills and saddling the school districts (taxpayers) with billions of extra expense which are unfunded mandates.

Most schools are not prepared and must create a sort of musical chairs game to test students on scarce computers which results in about 40% of the actual class time lost to students. It’s no wonder their scores have diminished.

We need to increase our standards and roll back to before 2009 to get the best standards with proven results. We need to go back to pencil and paper to cut billions in expenses and give all kids a fair chance as well as more time to learn. If we use off the shelf nationally normed tests like the Iowa Basics, or ACT, we will have true accountability and validity while also saving lots of money and preventing data mining.

These seem like simple and logical options. Demand our legislators listen to us and NOT JEB BUSH and his corporate cronies who are financing his run for the Presidency! Call in Monday as the last chance to amend the horrible Senate Committee bill will be voted on Tuesday. If you don’t speak up, your children will lose…..